Where Islam spreads, freedom dies

FIVE sons of the extremist preacher Abu Hamza, who is fighting extradition to the US, have been convicted of serious offences ranging from bomb making to fraud and assaulting police.

Four — including his stepson — have already served custodial sentences while the fifth is awaiting sentence for an armed robbery.

Abu Hamza, who this week launches a last-ditch attempt to avoid extradition, has nine children from two marriages including a stepson with his second wife. Of the seven sons, who are all over 18, only two have not been in trouble with the law. The two youngest children are daughters aged 16 and 13.

The facts about the sons’ offences reveal the legacy that Abu Hamza will leave behind if he is finally deported. The preacher was married in 1980 to Valerie Traverso, a British woman, and divorced four years later. They had one son, Mohammed. He has seven children with his second wife, Najat, and a stepson, Mohssin Ghailan, who was born to Najat before she married him.

Mohammed and Ghailan were jailed in Yemen in 1999, when Mohammed was 17, for plotting bomb attacks on tourist and economic targets. They returned to Britain after serving jail terms of three years and seven years respectively.

The two were arrested again in 2008 with their brother Hamza, then aged 22. They were accused of operating a £1m car scam in which they fraudulently obtained documents for luxury cars and either sold them or used them as collateral for loans that were never repaid.

Ghailan, from Shepherd’s Bush, west London, was described as a “key player” in the fraud. He was jailed for four years. Hamza was sentenced to 2Å years and Mohammed to two years.

Their younger brother, Yasser, admitted burglary in 2008 when he stole a laptop. He was given 120 hours’ community service. He was then sent to a young offenders institution for 12 months in 2010 for attacking a policeman during protests outside the Israeli embassy in London.

In August this year Abu Hamza’s 20-year-old son, Imran, was convicted of a £75,000 armed robbery at a jeweller’s shop in King’s Lynn, Norfolk. He is due to be sentenced in November. His two other sons have not been in trouble with the law but appear to take after their father in other ways.

Uthman, 24, is an imam in Acton, west London; his younger brother Sufyan, 18, was named on a poster as attending a charity rally for Syria in February alongside Haithem al-Haddad, a radical preacher.

Uthman recited a prayer outside the American embassy last year during a demonstration in support of Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani neuroscientist who was arrested in Afghanistan on suspicion of links to Al-Qaeda and jailed in the US for 86 years.

Uthman is becoming a well known figure in the west London Muslim community, mainly through his recitals of religious texts which have been described as “beautiful”.

Donna Traverso, the daughter of Valerie Traverso, told The Times in 2006 that her early memories of Abu Hamza were of a loving stepfather until he turned to fundamentalism. When her stepbrother Mohammed was three years old, Abu Hamza took him to Egypt to visit family members. Neither she nor her mother saw him again for 16 years. “He left me without saying goodbye, destroyed my family and told his own son that his mother was dead,” Donna Traverso said.

Mohammed has said he does not agree with his father’s radical preaching and is proud to be British. However, when he formed a rap duo, Lionz of Da Dezert, his lyrics praised Hezbollah and Hamas, the armed wings of which are both classified by Britain as terrorist organisations.

The family has also attracted controversy for its cost to Britain. The TaxPayers’ Alliance has estimated that Abu Hamza has cost the taxpayer £2.75m in welfare, housing and legal benefits.

At one time, the family was living in a £600,000 five-bedroom council house in Shepherd’s Bush and claiming £680 a week in benefits.

Inayat Bunglawala, of the Muslims4UK group, said: “It is sad to see that some of Abu Hamza’s children have been convicted of criminal acts. It is an extremely poor legacy . . . one can only hope his children at least may be able to shake off the negative influences and begin to rebuild their lives.”

Tomorrow I'm leaving Salamanca and going to live in Cordoba, former capital of Al-Andalus. I'll be looking for signs of its re-islamisation.

For now I'll say farewell to Salamanca with a few photographs.

Franco, leader of Spain, in Salamanca's Plaza Mayor

Salamanca's Plaza Mayor features plaques commemorating various Spanish luminaries. The former Spanish dictator is among them. Leftists have pushed for it to be removed but so far the pressure has been resisted. I find it interesting that there is still enough of a reservoir of conservatism here to have repulsed the hegemonic cultural pretensions of the Left, at least to this small degree. There are still people who will defend Franco. There hasn't been a wholesale repudiation of him, like there has been of, say, Hitler in Germany. And why should there be? The Communists were up to their necks in gore despite their re-writing of history to portray themselves as the good guys. As I mentioned once before, the poet Roy Campbell provides an interesting alternative perspective on the Spanish Civil War.

Ancient stone boar guarding Salamanca on the old Roman bridge

This is the boar that, according to legend, guards Salamanca from harm. It stands at the entrance to the city via the old Roman bridge. Hopefully, the fact that it is a pig (although some claim it's a bull, it's too time-worn to tell for sure) will keep the Muslims away.

Ancient stone boar guarding Salamanca on the old Roman bridge

These stone boars are ancient megaliths found in this part of Iberia. No one knows their original meaning or purpose. Maybe, in the old days, some far-seeing soul anticipated the need for a Mohammedan-deterrent in future.

Attacked yesterday evening around 7 pm, at the exit of his residence in the heart of Béziers city centre, Guillaume Vouzellaud (FN), is currently resting with his partner, France Jamet, in Montpelliérain.

It was around 7 pm, yesterday evening, when the regional secretary of the Front National, Guillaume Vouzellaud, candidate in the last legislative elections for the constituency of Béziers, was attacked by two individuals who were waiting for him at the exit of his residence, in 11 avenue Jean-Moulin. Struck on the head, perhaps using a blunt object, he is also suffering from a broken humerus and multiple contusions.

A mosque in Vandoeuvre, which surely must be among the ugliest in the world, has been defaced adorned with graffiti, purportedly from the Jewish Defence League. The letters "LDJ" were sprayed on the mosque door, along with a star of David and an inscription in Hebrew.

Muslim and Jewish groups in the area claim this is a provocation designed to set them at one another's throats, and have insinuated that the far right may be behind it. The LDJ has disclaimed responsibility and condemned the action.

Greece's far-right Golden Dawn party is increasingly assuming the role of law enforcement officers on the streets of the bankrupt country, with mounting evidence that Athenians are being openly directed by police to seek help from the neo-Nazi group, analysts, activists and lawyers say.

In return, a growing number of Greek crime victims have come to see the party, whose symbol bears an uncanny resemblance to the swastika, as a "protector".

One victim of crime, an eloquent US-trained civil servant, told the Guardian of her family's shock at being referred to the party when her mother recently called the police following an incident involving Albanian immigrants in their downtown apartment block.

"They immediately said if it's an issue with immigrants go to Golden Dawn," said the 38-year-old, who fearing for her job and safety, spoke only on condition of anonymity. "We don't condone Golden Dawn but there is an acute social problem that has come with the breakdown of feeling of security among lower and middle class people in the urban centre," she told the Guardian. "If the police and official mechanism can't deliver and there is no recourse to justice, then you have to turn to other maverick solutions."

Other Greeks with similar experiences said the far-rightists, catapulted into parliament on a ticket of tackling "immigrant scum" were simply doing the job of a defunct state that had left a growing number feeling overwhelmed by a "sense of powerlessness". "Nature hates vacuums and Golden Dawn is just filling a vacuum that no other party is addressing," one woman lamented. "It gives 'little people' a sense that they can survive, that they are safe in their own homes."

Far from being tamed, parliamentary legitimacy appears only to have emboldened the extremists. In recent weeks racially-motivated attacks have proliferated. Immigrants have spoken of their fear of roaming the streets at night following a spate of attacks by black-clad men on motorbikes. Street vendors from Africa and Asia have also been targeted.

"For a lot of people in poorer neighbourhoods we are liberators," crowed Yiannis Lagos, one of 18 MPs from the stridently patriot "popular nationalist movement" to enter the 300-seat house in June. "The state does nothing," he told a TV chat show, adding that Golden Dawn was the only party that was helping Greeks, hit by record levels of poverty and unemployment, on the ground. Through an expansive social outreach programme, which also includes providing services to the elderly in crime-ridden areas, the group regularly distributes food and clothes parcels to the needy.

But the hand-outs come at a price: allegiance to Golden Dawn. "A friend who was being seriously harassed by her husband and was referred to the party by the police very soon found herself giving it clothes and food in return," said a Greek teacher, who, citing the worsening environment enveloping the country, again spoke only on condition of anonymity. "She's a liberal and certainly no racist and is disgusted by what she has had to do."

The strategy, however, appears to be paying off. On the back of widespread anger over biting austerity measures that have also hit the poorest hardest, the popularity of the far-rightists has grown dramatically with polls indicating a surge in support for the party.

One survey last week showed a near doubling in the number of people voicing "positive opinions" about Golden Dawn, up from 12% in May to 22%. The popularity of Nikos Michaloliakos, the party's rabble-rousing leader had shot up by 8 points, much more than any other party leader.

Paschos Mandravelis, a prominent political analyst, attributed the rise in part to the symbiotic relationship between the police and Golden Dawn. "Greeks haven't turned extremist overnight. A lot of the party's backing comes from the police, young recruits who are a-political and know nothing about the Nazis or Hitler," he said. "For them, Golden Dawn supporters are their only allies on the frontline when there are clashes between riot police and leftists."

Riding the wave, the party has taken steps to set up branches among diaspora Greek communities abroad, opening an office in New York last week. Others are expected to open in Australia and Canada. Cadres say they are seeing particular momentum in support from women.

With Greeks becoming ever more radicalised, the conservative-led government has also clamped down on illegal immigration, detaining thousands in camps and increasing patrols along the country's land and sea frontier with Turkey.

But in an environment of ever increasing hate speech and mounting tensions, the party's heavy-handedness is also causing divisions. A threat by Golden Dawn to conduct raids against vendors attending an annual fair in the town of Arta this weekend has caused uproar.

"They say they have received complaints about immigrant vendors from shop owners here but that is simply untrue," said socialist mayor Yiannis Papalexis. "Extra police have been sent down from Athens and if they come they will be met by leftists who have said they will beat them up with clubs. I worry for the stability of my country."

Seated in her office beneath the Acropolis, Anna Diamantopoulou, a former EU commissioner, shakes her head in disbelief. Despair, she says, has brought Greece to a dangerous place.

"I never imagined that something like Golden Dawn would happen here, that Greeks could vote for such people," she sighed. "This policy they have of giving food only to the Greeks and blood only to the Greeks. The whole package is terrifying. This is a party based on hate of 'the other'. Now 'the other' is immigrants, but who will 'the other' be tomorrow?"

It's characteristic of states or even civilisations in decay that foreign powers come to have inordinate influence in their societies. We saw this, for example, in pre-revolutionary China or the Ottoman empire before the Young Turk revolution. There are signs of similar developments in Europe. The Americans, for example, have been "reaching out" to Muslims resident in Europe for some time, forming ties to supposed future leaders, even when they have dodgy connections to the Muslim Brotherhood or other jihadists. Now we are seeing the Arab oil states get in on the act. Having financing jihad revolutions around the Middle East, they've now turned their gaze on the restive Muslim masses of Europe.

Months after it was announced Qatar was financing a fund to economically reinvigorate France’s disadvantaged suburbs, the French government has said it also plans to pour cash into the project, which has already sparked much controversy.
By Rachel HOLMAN

It’s a tale of Qatari riches, disadvantaged French communities, politics and public image. The French government announced earlier this week that it would contribute to a fund to economically reinvigorate the country’s disadvantaged suburbs, or “banlieues” as they’re known in France. While on the surface the decision may seem unremarkable, the fund, which was initially to be financed entirely by Qatar, has been dogged by controversy.

The story began in November 2011, when ANELD - a French minority advocacy group comprised of elected officials from the country’s suburbs - approached Qatar’s ruler, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, with the idea to create a fund for business projects and proposals submitted by banlieue residents.

The forgotten souls of the Chêne Pointu estate
According to Leila Leghmara, vice-president and treasurer of ANELD, the small but oil-rich Gulf state had long expressed an interest in France’s disadvantaged areas, where youth unemployment can reach beyond 40 percent.

Qatar, which already has a number of investments in France and owns the world-famous Paris Saint Germain football club, offered 50 million euros for the project. When the news that the Gulf state was coughing up cash for France’s suburbs broke, it sparked a brouhaha among left and right-wing groups.

After protracted wrangling, during which the very purpose of the fund was threatened, President Françoise Hollande’s government decided to tackle this political hot potato once and for all.

Hollande’s minister of industry and growth, Arnaud Montebourg met ANELD’s members and stated that the government would also invest in the project, making it a joint French-Qatari fund.

While Montebourg has yet to give a clear indication of how much money the government plans to put up, Leghmara said the minister told ANELD that the project would total at least 100 million euros, roughly half of which would come from French funding.

‘Trojan Horse of Islamism’

At the heart of the controversy surrounding the fund lies widespread French suspicions over Qatar’s soft-power intentions in France’s disadvantaged banlieues, home to a significant number of France’s estimated 4-6 million Muslims.

“There’s something going on. Nothing is free, that’s for certain,” French Middle East expert Karim Sader told FRANCE 24. “We’re tempted to link the funding for the suburbs to Qatar’s Islamist leanings, given the country’s role in financing the Arab Spring revolutions and the Muslim Brotherhood.”

Over the past few months, Qatar’s role in the Arab Spring has raised eyebrows in Arab and Western diplomatic circles. Critics note that the Gulf emirate has been pushing the envelope. Qatar’s support for Islamist groups – including the Muslim Brotherhood and Libyan Islamist factions – have rung alarm bells across the international community.

FRANCE’S DISENFRANCHISED YOUTH

ON THE BLOGS
Welcome to the ‘Ministry of Suburbs’
Pointing to these Islamist ties, Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s far-right National Front party, immediately attacked the project on Monday, calling it a “major political mistake”.

“Arnaud Montebourg has shown that our country is indeed up for sale to oil monarchies who support radical Islam and jihadism across the world,” Le Pen wrote in a statement titled, “The Trojan Horse of Islamism”.

Members of the country’s political left also expressed discomfort with Qatar’s role in the project. Nicolas Demorand, director of the left-leaning French daily Libération, questioned the country’s motives for investing so much money into the suburbs in an editorial article published on Monday.

“Even if Qatari diplomacy works the circuits that define the modern world - those of finance, mass media, sport and entertainment, as well as the arts and academia - it is in no way a philanthropic enterprise (..) Therefore to see Qatar land in the French suburbs as a stand-in for a cash-strapped French Republic merits serious examination,” Demorand wrote.

Others, however, have viewed Qatar’s involvement more as an embarrassment for the French government.

“What’s interesting is that here is a state that is financing a project that is supposed to be [France’s] prerogative,” Sader told FRANCE24. “Our old countries are in crisis, and are no longer able to sustain a welfare state.”

In a speech marking the inauguration of the Strasbourg Grand Mosque, the biggest Islamic place of worship ever built on French soil, Interior Minister Manuel Valls pledged to come down hard on extremists, warning that foreign activists trying to stir up trouble would be immediately deported.

But he also held out an olive branch to the country's four million Muslims by promising state help for the construction of more mosques and for the training of Muslim clerics.

Valls, whose rhetoric has frequently drawn comparisons with that of rightwing former president Nicolas Sarkozy, praised French Muslims for their measured response to the recent publication of a satirical weekly's publication of cartoons caricaturing the Prophet Mohammed.

"Islam has its place in France because the Islam of France, it is a part of France," he told representatives of the Catholic, Jewish and Protestant communities attending the official opening the mosque capable of hosting 1,500 people.

...Built within two kilometres (just over a mile) from Strasbourg's celebrated cathedral, the new mosque has a capacity of 1,300 square metres (14,000 square feet), making it 1.5 times as big as the previous largest one in France, at Evry in the Paris suburbs.

It has a 16-metre copper dome but no minaret and has taken nearly two decades to complete since the project was first launched in 1993. The cost of construction was 10.5 million euros ($13.5 million), with the local region and the governments of Kuwait, Morocco and Saudi Arabia all contributing.

Michel del Burgo is considered one of the world's great chefs, having been in charge of several restaurants boasting 3 Michelin stars.

On Tuesday evening, at around 6.30 pm, the great chef who is preparing to open a highly prestigious restaurant in Carcassonne was the victim of an attack which he cannot explain. And which is making him ill. He tells his story.

"I was leaving my business premises and going to the city centre in a car, passing through the district La Conte. I stopped at the same level as a tobacconist's, on the other side of the road, to respond to a telephone call. While I was having the conversation, I heard shouts: "Piss off from there, filty Frenchman. This isn't your home, piss off!", he recalls. "At the time," he adds, "I didn't realise these insults were aimed at me". And as he continued his conversation, "Suddenly, a stone smashed the side window of the work vehicle, a small refrigerated van. And then a second shattered the windscreen," recalls Michel Del Burgo, who had no other choice but to start up and leave. qui n'a eu d'autre choix que de démarrer et partir.

..."I left Carcassonne 14 years ago, and I worked in several countries where I was never subjected to the slightest racist action. And now, I come back here, to a city which I left beautiful and peaceful, to experience that?"

Did your investigation reveal the existence of an "anti-white" racism?

Jean-Luc Primon: I would not speak of anti-white racism. But in our responses we have a proportion (just over 1 in 10) of the persons classed as belonging to the majority - who are neither immigrants, nor of immigrant descent, nor from the overseas territories - who declare that they have experienced racism.

But have trouble detecting the phenomenon because our investigation makes no distinction, within this majoritarian population, which allows us to to identify the minorities being racialised, such as persons of the Jewish or Muslim faiths, descendants of the third generation of immigrants or gypsies.

“There are certain districts in our towns, where individuals – some of which hold French nationality – despise French people who qualify as Gallic, under the pretext that they don’t share the same religion, don’t have the same skin colour, or the same origins.”

"These phenomena are impossible to see from Paris, in the media and political spheres where the large majority of those in charge are French people with white skin, born to French parents. In these microcosms, the lack of diversity limits the presence of persons of colour or of foreign origin...But let us look truth in the eye: the situation is reversed in many of the districts of our 'banlieues'."

Jean-François Copé, a senior politician within the mainstream right-wing grouping, the UMP (Sarkozy's party), has broken a taboo by denouncing what he calls "anti-white racism" in France. The words come from a book he has written, which is to be published soon, and extracts from which will appear in Le Figaro on Friday.

While the Front National has been denouncing anti-white racism for years, the adoption of the phrase by a mainstream politician has broken a taboo and provoked a furore.

Marine Le Pen has denounced Jean-François Copé's cynicism for having systematically ignored the phenomenon while in office, then highlighting it only a few months later when he is campaigning for his party's leadership.

These are scanned images from the latest edition of the Spanish satirical magazine "El Jueves".

TO UNDERSTAND US: YOU DON'T OFFEND MOHAMMED IF:iN HIS NAME YOU MASSACRE INFIDELS, DECAPITATE SOMEONE WHO LISTENS TO MUSIC, HANG HOMOSEXUALS, IMPRISON A 12-YEAR-OLD GIRL WITH DOWN'S SYNDROME FOR BLASPHEMY, STONE WOMEN FOR HAVING BEEN RAPEDYOU DO OFFEND MOHAMMED IF:YOU DRAW CARTOONS OF HIM"Caricaturing the prophet? What kind of psychopathic beast would do such a thing?"

Spain's satirical magazine, El Jueves, has decided to join the Mohammed fray to show support for Charlie Hebdo. This week the magazine's front page shows several potential Mohammed look-alikes attending a police line-up.

José Luis Martín, member of the editorial board and employee of the magazine, responded as follows when asked about fear of reprisals: "It's not a dish that tastes good, but we cannot remain silent. We humourists cannot self-censor every time there is a danger of a violent response".

Andrew Norfolk is the Times journalist behind most of the Times' stories about the "Asian" grooming scandal and the complicity of the authorities in covering it up. It is to the Times' credit that they eventually broke this story into the mainstream. But let's not forget that it was known about for many years before that. Local newspapers in the areas affected had been publishing front-page stories about it for years. Some of them had even been waging campaigns on the issue to try and get the police to acknowledge the problem and conduct prosecutions.

So when establishment journalists and politicians pretend that the Times stories have come as a revelation to them, they are lying. Journalists working for national newspapers routinely scan the local press to see if there's anything worth picking up. All politicians in the areas affected must have been aware of the problem. It's one of these things that everyone knows about yet finds rigorously excluded from the public sphere. Muslim vote fraud is another. Perhaps in 10-15 years some national newspaper will decide that Muslim vote fraud can no longer be covered up and politicians and journalists will pretend to be surprised when stories are finally written about it. This is the bizarro world of the multicult. Life in the Soviet Union must have been similar.

On their website, the BNP claim that Andrew Norfolk admitted that he knew about the problem long before he ever wrote about it, but remained silent because he didn't want to help the BNP.

Norfolk himself is on record as being ‘aware of Child Sexual Exploitation 8 years ago. Norfolk’s reason why he didn’t do an article like the one today in the Times earlier was the oddest one of all, It was and I am quoting here. ‘ I did nothing and I know why I did nothing. It was because I sensed the saliva dribbling down the chin of Nick Griffin leader of the BNP. This was the far rights dream story, innocent white girls, evil Muslims, a perfect way to sow hatred between white and non white communities’.

They don't cite a source for this quote. I posted a comment on their site asking for the source and their moderator deleted it! So, does anyone know the source for this Andrew Norfolk quote?

UPDATE: In response to a comment on the Times story on the grooming scandal today, which challenged him about whether he had known about it years before but remained silent, Andrew Norfolk posted this:

This has been a two-year investigation.

Anne Cryer raised concerns in 2003 about what was happening in Keighley, West Yorkshire. We ran a brief story and moved on. I could and should have pleaded for time to look into it. I regret deeply that it took another seven years of growing unease before I finally sought and was given permission to examine in detail what seemed to be a pattern of offending across so many northern towns and cities.

I know that back in 2003 a major factor in my failure to probe thoroughly into Anne Cryer's allegations was a reluctance give undue weight to claims that were a fantasy story for the far right's poisonously simplistic message of white equals good, Muslim equals evil. Liberal squeamishness was given priority over vulnerable children.
It is not a mistake I intend to repeat.

You call for an inquiry into journalists' failure to report this. I'd gently suggest that there might be certain representatives of other organisations - police forces, local authorities, mainstream political parties - who merit a higher place in your firing line than the messengers who were too slow to reveal a crime model whose existence those authorities denied and continue to deny.

They had the evidence. They knew the girls. They knew that grotesque crimes were being committed against children. They went to the meetings. They had a mountain of case files and internal reports.

Greek ultra-nationalist party Golden Dawn (Chrysi Avgi) is under the political microscope as several government ministers have debated outlawing the party. Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has discussed a possible ban but so far appears negative.

The election of Golden Dawn to parliament in June this year acted as a shock to the political world. From the beginning other political parties refused to work with them, but have witnessed the surging popularity of Golden Dawn amongst citizens, as their own political popularity wanes.

Golden Dawn is a legitimate political party protected under the Greek constitution, with current polls indicating it has more than 10 percent of the electoral vote. Digital Journal reported that former Greek Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis said this weekend that "If we had elections tomorrow the Golden Dawn would get 20%."

Despite Golden Dawn's political legitimacy their presence in parliament has set off alarm bells across Greece and Europe. Many claim the party is Neo-Nazi, a charge the party denies. It also vehemently denies any links to a spate of racist violence that has seen immigrants attacked. The party has however been involved in a number of direct actions that prompted debate, including a vote by the parliamentary ethics committee.

To Vima reports that several government ministers have been discussing outlawing the party with Antonis Samaras. However, the prime minister is not in favour of a ban. Talk of outlawing the party is not new.

In May Digital Journal reported Moshe Kantor, President of the European Jewish Congress, called for a ban on European far-right groups, following Golden Dawn's first electoral victory and entrance to parliament.

Earlier this year the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe, Nils Muiznieks, initiated an investigation into allegations of links between the Greek police and Golden Dawn. Now he has called on the Greek government to investigate if Golden Dawn should be outlawed.

Recently Alexandros Sakellariou, a sociologist and researcher at Panteion University in Athens, told theSET Times: "Golden Dawn does not have any legitimate place in the government, but it does have a legitimate place in the political arena from the moment it is a legitimate political party."

In a recent interview Alexis Tsipras, leader of the coalition of the extreme left, SYRIZA, told Athens News that Golden Dawn are "obviously being treated with tolerance by the police, the mass media and a broad swathe of the pro-memorandum front. This tolerant attitude must end. Whether these organisations are acting within the parameters of the law is for the courts to judge. On the other hand, the fact is that a substantial segment of the electorate chose an extreme answer to the crisis by voting for the neo-Nazi party, thinking that they were casting a so-called anti-system vote."

As ministers debate outlawing Golden Dawn To Vima reports several members of the cabinet have said: "It is not so easy to outlaw. A decision to outlaw will lead to more intense activism with unpredictable consequences."

Concerned about repeated reports of racist violence allegedly committed by members of Golden Dawn, Minister of Public Order Nikos Dendias has given orders for police to come up with a strategy to deal with the issue. According to RFI Golden Dawn headquarters and local branches are under observation from the security police, whilst related websites are under surveillance by the Cyber Crime Unit. These measures are intended to keep a tight control to limit actions by Golden Dawn, and to curb its influence.

Meanwhile Dendias has been tasked with dealing with many of the issues raised by Golden Dawn. The aim is to mitigate direct action by Golden Dawn by replacing it with a political solution. If the government is seen to be dealing with issues which have helped Golden Dawn win popularity, then the party is expected to limit its action and concentrate more on the parliamentary process.

Amy comes from a stable, loving home, far removed from the background of family dysfunction or residential care often associated with victims of child sexual exploitation.

Hers was a secure life built around the normal routines of schoolgirls up and down Britain. But it had one weakness for those intent on abuse — a daily window of opportunity between the end of the school day at 4.30pm and her parents’ return home from the family business four hours later.

For three months, when they thought she was at home or playing with her friends, the 13-year-old was catching a bus into Rotherham, South Yorkshire, with a girl from her school who had introduced her to some exciting new friends.

Throughout the abuse that followed, Amy was never home late, nor did she once go missing overnight. But as the weeks passed, her mother sensed that something was wrong. Amy was misbehaving at school, which was unheard of, and she had become moody and argumentative at home.

By the time her parents learnt the truth, their child had been repeatedly raped and used for sex by at least six adults, all in their late teens or early 20s.

The Times revealed yesterday that South Yorkshire Police and social services knew for more than a decade that organised groups of men, largely of Pakistani heritage, were grooming, pimping and trafficking girls from Rotherham. Hundreds of confidential documents shown to this newspaper suggested that agencies consistently failed to protect victims or prosecute offenders. Last night, Denis MacShane, the town’s Labour MP, demanded an independent public inquiry.

Warning bells sounded in Amy’s case one evening when neighbours phoned her mother at work. Two young Asian men had been wandering around outside their house, knocking on doors and windows and were now sitting outside in a parked car. She rushed home.

The men had gone but Amy, who was inside, had a mark on her face. She said she had tripped; in fact, she had been punched by her main abuser. The next day, while Amy was at school, her mother found a mobile phone in her bedroom with more than a hundred male names and numbers.

Amy, whose name The Times has changed to protect her identity, remembers arriving home that afternoon. Her mother was sitting at the kitchen table waiting for her. She asked Amy to sit down and tell her what was wrong — and the floodgates opened.

“I just blurted it out. All that time I think I’d been waiting for someone to ask me. Finally, someone had,” she recalled.

Her mother’s memory is that Amy began sobbing hysterically: “I’ve been raped, Mum. They’re raping me.”

“She was distraught and she wasn’t making much sense. We were both crying. I phoned her dad, told him to get home straight away, then dialled 999. Amy said, ‘It’s no good ringing the police, Mum. These people are more powerful than God’ .”

So began the steepest of learning curves for Amy’s parents, whose assumption that the police would “sort everything out” proved naive in the extreme. The first officer to hear her story filed a report that evening, in April 2003, stating that although Amy was alleging four rapes “it appears this matter would be more realistically viewed as unlawful sexual intercourse as she has gone back to see him repeatedly”.

With her clothes taken as evidence, Amy was medically examined and gave a three-hour police interview in which she spoke about her main abuser but was too ashamed to mention other incidents with other men.

The alleged rapist, in his late teens, came from a family with a reputation for dealing drugs, using weapons and violence. Amy’s family say that threats of retribution soon followed.

Two girls who witnessed some of the abuse initially agreed to give statements but swiftly changed their minds, passing on a message that if Amy gave evidence she was “a dead girl walking”.

Men began phoning the house suggesting that their home would be firebombed and Amy’s mother raped. The family, described in a social services report as “very loving and protective”, was terrified.

As a result, Amy withdrew her complaint. She and her parents insist that they took the decision after learning that police had lost her clothes and, thus, any chance of securing forensic evidence to support her claims.

South Yorkshire Police says it lost the clothes after Amy asked for the case to be dropped. At the time, a police report noted that she maintained the truth of her story. An officer added her written opinion that the girl was lying. The case was dropped, marked “no crime — false complaint”. There were said to be “no further lines of inquiry”.

Within six months Amy was back at a police station. Her parents, who had moved Amy to a new school, thought she had ended all contact with the men. The respite was only temporary.

Amy knew that they were using her but part of her craved their attention. After a gap of several months, mobile phone contact resumed, although not with her main abuser, and she persuaded herself that his friends were different and genuinely cared about her.

Phone contact led to meetings. By the summer of 2003, aged 14, she was heading downhill fast. Matters came to a head when two of the so-called friends persuaded her to go to a flat, where she claimed that she was sexually abused in a bedroom by five men, one after the other.

Four were British Pakistanis. The fifth, aged 32, an Iraqi Kurd asylum seeker. Two were strangers who arrived after she was placed in a bedroom. The door handle was held from the outside to prevent her leaving.

“I wanted to cry. I just wanted to go home,” she told the police after confiding in her mother. The family decided that this time, whatever the cost, the guilty men must face justice.

Amy’s mother wrote to David Blunkett, the Home Secretary. They had meetings with their local MP and in September were visited by a police officer and social worker who told them that Amy “could help police to stop this by giving evidence against [the men]”.

A social worker’s notes record that Amy “decided to go ahead with a complaint”. She wanted “to get away from them and to stop it happening to other girls”.

She gave police a two-hour interview, identified the flat and three men were arrested. Two, aged 20 and 32, said they knew Amy but denied that sexual activity had taken place. The third, 19, admitted having sex with her and agreed that a succession of men had gone into the bedroom. He claimed, however, not to have known “that all these men would have sex with her”.

Amy and her parents hoped that police would not only charge the men from the flat but also reopen their investigation into the rapes six months earlier. Not so. The police concluded there was insufficient evidence to prosecute anyone.

The same detective constable who previously suggested that Amy was lying sent a report to her inspector. She wrote that she had told Amy’s parents “that the police could not stop [Amy] from meeting these men if she wished to do so and that they had to accept some responsibility for protecting their own daughter”.

In his response, the inspector questioned Amy’s “strength and credibility as a witness”. Seemingly forgetting the admissions made by the 19-year-old, he suggested that there was “no corroboration in respect of any of the allegations”.

His conclusion was that there was “no realistic prospect of conviction regarding the three identified suspects”. A file went to the Crown Prosecution Service and was duly returned by the reviewing lawyer with a recommendation against bringing charges.

For Amy’s parents, the news was devastating. Not only were the men at large but the implied message was that the authorities did not believe their daughter. By now she was barely attending school and sleeping in her mother’s bed because she was too scared to be alone at night. A child psychiatrist voiced “extreme concern” about her mental state.

The doctor wrote that Amy’s “faith in institutions has been undermined by the failure of the police to use the evidence that was given to them or even to confront those adults, who have a reputation for abusing other children”.

The psychiatrist later told Amy’s parents that “these men working across the country, targeting and trafficking young girls for the purposes of prostitution . . . if they were in their own country, they would be either stoned to death or beheaded”.

A kosher butcher in the Avenue Corentin-Cariou was lightly wounded yesterday in his shop after being attacked by seven individuals. The incident took place around 4:30 pm. A veiled woman appeared in front of the shop and started to take photographs of it for no obvious reason.

The butcher came out to meet her and, in response, in his turn, took photographs of the woman. Two men who were passing by then attacked the shop-owner, reproaching him for taking photographs of the veiled woman. The two passers-by finally left the scene before coming back a few minutes later with five friends armed with an air pistol to attack the butcher with. The butcher was slightly wounded in the altercation that followed.

Three persons were arrested then interviewed freely before being released in the early evening, not having been recognised by the victim and two witnesses present at the scene. The investigation, to be conducted by the local police station, is continuing in an attempt to find the attackers.

As Islamists rioted on the streets of Athens on Sunday afternoon in protest against the film "Innocence of Muslims", Muslim prisoners in Korydallos Prison, Athens, went on the rampage.

Muslim prison inmates in Korydallos Prison showed solidarity with their fellow Islamists rioting on the streets of Athens, by staging their own prison riot.

To Vima reported the riot broke out on the wings which held mainly foreign prisoners during Sunday afternoon: by the evening the situation was uncontrollable.

According to Proto Thema Muslim prisoners burned improvised American flags, set fire to mattresses and clothes, and threw stones. Prison officials had to seek assistance from riot police using teargas to bring the riot under control.

Riot police also had to resort to teargas to control rioting Muslims in central Athens that vandalized shops and cars as they rampaged in protest over perceived insults against the Prophet Mohammed. Rioters were prevented from storming the U.S. Embassy due to the diligence of the Greek police.

The French city of Tours recently woke to the sound of the muezzin, generated not by Muslims in this case, but the French nationalist group Vox Populi. Their aim was to spread awareness of the mosque construction plans in the area and demand transparency with regard to the mosque financing, which they believe must be coming from foreign states that do not permit freedom of worship on their own territories.

This is from Melilla, one of the Spanish exclaves in Africa, surrounded by Morocco. The Muslim is beating a woman in the street, surrounded by other Muslims who do nothing to stop him. A Spanish couple who live just above notice what's going on. The woman starts to record the scene on her mobile phone, shouting to the men below that she is recording, while her husband goes to intervene personally.

When the man is subdued, the woman retrieves a document from him, so it looks as if he had taken something from her. It's not known whether they are related. A complaint was later filed with the police along with the video.

On Friday night a church in the village of Chassieu in France was vandalised with graffiti reading "Islam is growing in power" and "M. Merah". The town council quickly arranged for the graffiti to be erased. While it is normal for mosque desecrations in France to make national and even international headlines, so far there appear to have been no significant reporting of this event. No politicians have denounced it, declared that it runs contrary to the values of the Republic, promised a massive police operation to catch the perpetrators or harsh punishment for them when found.

The whole thing might have been erased from history had it not been for the initiative of a local nationalist group in taking a photograph of the graffiti and publishing a report about it on its website.

Without reference to this specific incident (which had not occurred then), Marine Le Pen mentioned this curious disparity in treatment in the interview she gave to Le Monde a few days ago:

I'm glad the crime of blasphemy no longer exists. What I find astonishing is the variable geometry of the political class. We are in a country where 95% of the desecrations concern Catholic places of worship or graves and not a single line appears, not one statement from a minister. And as soon as there is a desecration of a mosque or square, immediately, a press statement has to be issued.

Greece's ultra-nationalist party Golden Dawn (Chrysi Avgi) has inaugurated a new office in New York City, to reach out to the Greek diaspora. A branch of the political party is already operational in Melbourne, Australia.

According to Ekathimerini two polls this weekend have placed Golden Dawn as the third political party in Greece, on nine percent of the vote. Their rise in popularity, which Digital Journal reported as standing at 22 percent, means that the ultra-nationalist party has now overtaken PASOK in public opinion.

Golden Dawn is now reaching out to the Greek diaspora, opening a branch of the political party in New York City. The party's New York website says:
"The Golden Dawn is the only political party in Greece that unapologetically stands for the sovereignty, security, and dignity of the Greek people. The party intends to reverse decades of unlimited third world immigration which has brought crime, unemployment, disease and possibly terrorism to the once peaceful Greek cities.

"We stand with the Greek people who have been driven to poverty and despair by the imposition of the genocidal IMF and European Union austerity policies that are decimating the population and turning Greece into a slave state.

"Our goals are to promote and support the Golden Dawn’s nationalist ideals and vision for Greece among the Greek diaspora. We must resist and overcome the genocidal multi- culturalist, and anti-Hellenic agenda of the New World Order."

Thus far the party has collected medicines, food and clothing from the diaspora in the U.S. to send to Greece.

Confidential police reports and intelligence files that reveal a hidden truth about the sale and extensive use of English children for sex are exposed today.

They show that for more than a decade organised groups of men were able to groom, pimp and traffic girls across the country with virtual impunity. Offenders were identified to police but not prosecuted.

A child welfare expert, speaking under condition of anonymity, said that agencies’ reluctance to tackle such street-grooming networks was “the biggest child protection scandal of our time”.

The Times has published several articles about a pattern of crimes across northern England and the Midlands involving groups of men, largely of Pakistani heritage, and the sexual abuse of white girls aged from 12 to 16.

We can now reveal evidence from more than 200 restricted-access documents, which show that, in one area, police and child protection agencies have held extensive knowledge of this crime model for ten years, yet have never publicly acknowledged its existence.

The internal police and social services correspondence, research papers, intelligence reports and case files are a detailed history of alleged child sexual exploitation in South Yorkshire since 2000, focusing on Rotherham. They include a confidential 2010 report by the police intelligence bureau warning that thousands of such crimes were committed in the county each year.

It contains explosive details about the men responsible for the most serious, co-ordinated abuse. “Possibly the most shocking threat is the existence of substantial and organised offender networks that groom and exploit victims on a worrying scale,” the report says. “Practitioners throughout the force state there is a problem with networks of Asian offenders both locally and nationally. This was particularly stressed in Sheffield and even more so in Rotherham, where there appears to be a significant problem with networks of Asian males exploiting young white females.” Such groups are said to have trafficked South Yorkshire child victims “to many other cities, including Bristol, Manchester, Birmingham, Bradford and Dover”.

Another confidential 2010 report. for the Rotherham Safeguarding Children Board, noted that such crimes had “cultural characteristics . . . which are locally sensitive in terms of diversity”.

It said: “There are sensitivities of ethnicity with potential to endanger the harmony of community relationships. Great care will be taken in drafting . . . this report to ensure that its findings embrace Rotherham’s qualities of diversity. It is imperative that suggestions of a wider cultural phenomenon are avoided.”

Alleged crimes for which no one was prosecuted include:

Fifty-four Rotherham children were linked to sexual exploitation by three brothers from one British Pakistani family, 18 identifying one brother as their “boyfriend” and several allegedly made pregnant by him;

A 14-year-old girl from a loving, supportive family was allegedly held in a flat and forced to perform sex acts on five men, four of them Pakistani, plus a 32-year-old Iraqi Kurd asylum seeker. She gave a filmed police interview and identified her abusers;

One girl, 15, spent days in hospital after a broken bottle was allegedly forced inside her by two young British Pakistani men in a park, causing her to bleed extensively;

A 13-year-old girl was found at 3am with disrupted clothing in a house with a large group of Asian men who had fed her vodka. A neighbour reported the girl’s screams.

Police arrested the child for being drunk and disorderly but did not question the men;
A specialist project’s intelligence report for police identified 61 girls — 59 white, two Asian — linked to sexual exploitation by three brothers from another British Pakistani family. It named 41 associates of the brothers who allegedly used girls for sex.

The confidential documents revealed today suggest a failure by police and social services to protect teenagers and bring charges against their abusers, even when agencies held detailed intelligence about the men and their victims.

They also reveal that one young white girl, known by social services to have been sexually abused by Asian men from the age of 12, was offered language lessons in Urdu and Punjabi by Rotherham council. The aim was “to engage” her in education.

Denis MacShane, MP for Rotherham, said he was appalled that in several meetings with senior South Yorkshire police officers to discuss internal trafficking, “no one has ever revealed or even hinted at the important allegations made by The Times”.

He added: “There’s a culture here of denial and cover-up and a refusal to accept the reality that we have men living in the Rotherham community who treat young girls as objects for their sexual pleasure. It’s time to tell the truth. We must root out this evil.”

In 2002, the confidential report of a Home Office-funded research project considered a series of Rotherham case studies. It criticised police for “in all cases” treating young victims “as deviant and promiscuous” while “the men they were found with were never questioned or investigated”.

There have only been two group prosecutions in South Yorkshire since 1996, when concerns were first raised about grooming networks. Several Iraqi Kurds were charged in Sheffield in 2007 and eight British Pakistanis went on trial in Rotherham in 2010.

Throughout this period, Rotherham council has failed to accept the role of ethnicity and culture in such group offending. Earlier this year, this newspaper revealed how the town’s safeguarding children board censored a report into the murder of a 17-year-old girl to conceal the ethnicity of the British Pakistani men suspected of using her for sex from the age of 11.

Police fired tear gas at a thousand angry Pakis to stop them reaching the American embassy while protesting against the film Innocence of Muslims.

Hundreds of Muslim protesters staged a rally in central Athens on Sunday to protest against a film made in California which mocks Islam's Prophet Mohammad, the first such demonstration in Greece.

The protesters chanted «All we have is Mohammad» and held banners reading «We demand an immediate punishment for those who tried to mock our Prophet Mohammad» as they prepared to march to the US Embassy.

There were brief moments of tension when some demonstrators hurled bottles at police, who responded with teargas.

Police shut down the Megaron metro station and were considering blocking the march, which began in Omonia Square, before it reached the heavily guarded embassy to prevent possible violence, police officials said. Greece is home to hundreds of thousands of Muslims.

For one hour a group of Moroccan activists blocked the frontiers of Ceuta and Melilla to lay claim to both of these Spanish territories. The protest was peaceful and developed without incident. The Committee of Liberation of Ceuta and Melilla, in which Moroccan politicians participate, called this protest. This blocking action occurred the day after 30 immigrants entered Melilla by jumping the fence.

Cervantes, author of Don Quixote, is well-known as one of the founders of Spanish literature. We in the Counterjihad movement must also honour him as a participant in the Battle of Lepanto, one of the most decisive encounters between Europe and Mohammedanism. In fact, it was the injuries he sustained in that battle that rendered him unfit for other work and led him to pursue writing as a career.

It's generally agreed by historians that Cervantes spent a number of years in Salamanca. Several of the story motifs in his works show traces of local Salamanca lore. The street where he is said to have lived is just round the corner from me. Now called Calle de Cervantes, it used to be called Calle de los Moros (Street of the Moors), so the name change is very appropriate for someone who participated in Lepanto.

Rachid Nekkaz, the Muslim "entrepreneur" who has offered to pay the fines of all women convicted of wearing a burka in France, is now seeking to acquire a 51% controlling interest in Charlie Hebdo, according to a post on his blog.

"Given that the magazine Charlie Hebdo is feeling the full force of the crisis which is affecting the entire French press, I think it is important to preserve and perpetuate the satirical character of the magazine Charlie Hebdo", he writes.

Specifically, he offers to inject 700,000 euros into the magazine immediately, and more if needed. "Considering the magazine's liabilities and debt, this operation could be beneficial to Charlie Hebdo because it simultaneously guarantees both the independence of its editorial line and a certain financial stability," declares Mr Nekkaz.

"At a time when the magazine is the declared target of extremist islamists on all sides, it is not inopportune that Charlie Hebdo's board of directors should welcome a shareholder of Muslim culture into its midst."

Here are some translated extracts from Marine Le Pen's interview with Le Monde.

What's your reaction to the "Charlie Hebdo" affair?

There is a trial of strength between the different groups of political and religious fundamentalists in France. These trials of strength have been lost, notably by the Sarkozyist right. And each time that they have negotiated, fallen back, twisted, the ground has been prepared for the events which are shaking the world today. No negotiations are possible.

Either we say that freedom of expression with the reservations imposed by the law, or we put in place censorship of the internet, we submit the newspapers for preliminary reading by the government, we re-establish the crime of blasphemy.

Are you for a right to blaspheme?

I'm glad the crime of blasphemy no longer exists. What I find astonishing is the variable geometry of the political class. We are in a country where 95% of the desecrations concern Catholic places of worship or graves and not a single line appears, not one statement from a minister. And as soon as there is a desecration of a mosque or square, immediately, a press statement has to be issued.

If you were in power, what would you do?

I'd throw out all the foreign fundamentalists. We know them very well. The Law of 1905 [Law of secularism separating church and state] has to be applied strictly: no more mosque financing, directly or indirectly. No more foreign financing. Except in a specific case of a reciprocity agreement. I am happy that a foreign state finances a mosque in our country if it does not prohibit the financing of churches or any other religion on its own territory.

How would the mosques be financed?

With the money of the faithful. As applies to all other religions. The law doesn't recognise any religion. No more prayers in the streets, no more dietary requirements in the public schools.

Kosher as well as halal?

The same. I will have it written in the Constitution that "the Republic does not recognise any community". Which would allow us to oppose all the communitarian claims, including those from the private sector.

Are you still for banning the veil in public spaces? In the street?

Yes, the shops, transport, the street...

It's a measure that kills freedom...

That depends on what you consider freedom. You're prohibited from walking naked in the street...Is that freedom-killing?

How would you define that a veil is religious or not? That poses a problem of application of the law...

It's banned. The veil is banned. That's clear! We are capable of making the distinction between a religious veil and one that isn't.

This ban would apply to all ostentatious signs?

What do you call ostentatious signs?

The kippa for example...

It's clear that if we ban the veil, we ban the kippa in public spaces.

Should we conduct a specific action in the banlieues?

When you've sent the fundamentalist foreign imams back to their countries - beuse the vast majority are foreigners - when you've stopped financing Islam left, right and centre, and by definition fundamentalist Islam, the civil populations of the "quartiers" need to be protected from the pressure of the fundamentalists, including the Muslims populations who are victims of it. For that, we need order to return to the law, for the Republic to resume its grip on a certain number of "quartiers".

How does the Republic resume its grip?

First through the school, to which we will give its role. Primary school shouldn't be giving course in foreign languages and culture. The role of the secular school, public and Republican, is to manufacture French people. Not to send children back to their origins. To prevent religion becoming an identity, a substitute nationality, we need to give substantive content to French nationality. This is the national priority. on

You are French, yellow, green, orange, brown, black; you are agnostic, atheist, Muslim, Jewish.. because you are French, you have priority access to social housing and employment. You are going to know why you are French. There are many young people who define themselves first of all by their origins and not by their nationality. So, stop double nationality.

What's your opinion of the consequences of the Arab revolutions?

The "Arab spring" has turned into the Islamist winter. It's very worrying for Europe, because there is a risk it will result in a worsening of immigration. I think of the interests of the people of these countries, many of whom are starting to live in fear.

Libya is perhaps the most dramatic situation and the one where we have the greatest responsibility. We consciously placed at the head of the Libyan state fundamentalists who had been armed to Qatar. We have been irresponsible in blindly following the United States.

There is a country, the United States, which never stops saying that it is in a struggle against fundamentalism and which, every time it has intervened somewhere, has delivered the country where it intervened to Islamist fundamentalists.

As to the affair of the film Innocence of Muslims, it is eminently suspect. This type of Z-level sub-series is put online as if by chance by a Salafist television channel, and as if by chance, it provokes this attack in Benghazi, on 11 September. I don't believe in the chance element in this business.

Slogans insulting non-Muslims (the "infidels") have appeared in the main Muslim districts in Ceuta today, as a result of the situation that is occurring because of the anti-Mohammed video filmed in the USA.

The peripheral districts of Príncipe Alfonso, Poblado de Regulares and the area close to the Sidi Embarek mosque featured insulting graffiti this morning, the main ones being close to a church and the Franciscan Brotherhood of the White Cross.

Messages such as "Infieles de mierda" [Shit infidels] or "Nuestro profeta sigue existiendo"[Our prophet still exists] filled various walls today in the population centres inhabited mainly by Ceutans of the Muslim faith.

Until recently Andrew Mitchell was Development Secretary, pushing through a massive increase in foreign aidjizya spending to Islamic countries, reaching out to the OIC and engaging in ostentatious do-gooderism of every kind. Now we see a glimpse of what lurks beneath the facade of these xenomaniacs: contempt for the ordinary people of Europe.

Chief Whip Andrew Mitchell is alleged to have told the officers they had "best learn your f------ place" before angrily accusing them of being "f------- plebs".

He is said to have condemned the officers guarding Number 10 as "morons", leaving bystanders "visibly shocked" by the tirade.

Last night, Mr Mitchell said he had already apologised to the officers involved and admitted he "did not treat the police with the respect they deserve". However he denied using some of the words reported by The Sun.

His outburst appears to have been prompted by the armed officers' refusal to open the gates in Downing Street to let him cycle through.

A source told the newspaper Mr Mitchell said: “Open this gate, I’m the Chief Whip. I’m telling you - I’m the Chief Whip and I’m coming through these gates.”

The officers declined to do as instructed, and warned him he would be arrested under the Public Order Act if he persisted.

He then began pushing his bike, before telling a PC: “Best you learn your f------ place. You don’t run this f------- government.

British author Salman Rushdie, who lived in hiding for nine years under a death sentence from Iran's supreme leader, said in an interview published on Thursday that something had gone wrong at the heart of Islam.

Rushdie told Le Monde newspaper that his years fleeing the 1989 fatwa from Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had forced him to pay close attention to a radicalization of the Muslim world.

"Something has gone wrong at the heart of Islam. It is quite recent. I remember when I was young, many cities in the Muslim world were cosmopolitan cities with a lot of culture," he said in an interview published in French.

"For me, it is a tragedy that this culture has regressed to this point, like a self-inflicted wound. The Islam in which I grew up was open, influenced by Sufism and Hinduism, and not like the one which is spreading rapidly at the moment."

The fatwa, in response to his 1988 novel "The Satanic Verses", made Rushdie synonymous with the tussle between freedom of expression and the need to respect religious sensitivities. A memoir of his nine years in hiding following the fatwa was published this week.

The interview was conducted on September 12, just as a film mocking the Prophet Mohammad sparked violent protests across the Islamic world. These included a deadly attack in Libya which killed the U.S. ambassador and three embassy staff.

The California-made film, and a series of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad published by a French satirical weekly on Wednesday, have revived international debate over free speech, religion and the right to offend. Many Muslims consider any representation of Allah or the Prophet Mohammad blasphemous.

"There is a limit beyond which you cannot blame the West any more," Rushdie told Le Monde. "Having said that, if there was the slightest sign that Muslim society was able to create an open democracy, I would change my opinion."

This week an Iranian religious foundation increased its reward for the killing of Rushdie, in response to the film mocking Mohammad.

A German satirical magazine has entered the row over an anti-Islam video by printing a picture of the former German first lady in the arms of a turban-clad man with a dagger. The move comes during protests across the Arab world.

The magazine Titanic presented the front page of its October edition showing a photo montage of Bettina Wulff – wife of former German President Christian Wulff – being embraced by a Muslim fighter wearing a turban and brandishing a dagger.

The headline reads, "West Rises Up: Bettina Wulff Makes Film About Mohammed." The magazine, which prints 100,000 copies a month, gained notoriety in July for printing a picture of the pope with yellow stains down his cassock.

"Now Mohammed is on everybody's lips, we are reacting," editor Leo Fischer said in an interview with weekly Der Spiegel. The magazine decided not to include religious caricatures published in French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, but said it supported Hebdo's decision to do so.

Meanwhile, police said that German embassies and consulates in Arabic countries would be on high alert after Friday, a religious holiday, as some experts fear that violence could again escalate.

Several German cities are also expected to host protests against the amateurish US-made film "The Innocence of Muslims" on Friday and over the weekend.

Around 800 people are expected to gather on Friday in Freiburg in the southwest. Up to 500 in the northern city of Hannover on Sunday; and others in the northern city of Cuxhaven over the weekend.

Police are acting on the basis that these will be peaceful protests but were ready for any possible trouble, a spokesman said.

An opinion poll carried out by the N24-Emnid institute said Thursday that 72 percent of Germans were against the film being shown in public and just 21 percent were in favour. The poll was taken among 1,000 people on Wednesday.

The German interior ministry meanwhile announced that a government poster campaign against the radicalisation of some young Muslims had been delayed.

Following federal police warnings "about the current dangers" the start of the campaign, scheduled for Friday, had been put off and no new date had been set, the ministry said.

The speaker of the European parliament has strongly condemned the recent anti-Islam film Innocence of Muslims. But he in his turn has been roundly criticised for giving in to extremists. The film continues to provoke fierce reactions in the Western as well as the Arab world.

“I condemn strongly not only the content but also the distribution of such a movie, which is humiliating the feelings of a lot of people all over the world,” said a press statement issued yesterday by Martin Schulz, the speaker of the European parliament, in reaction to the amateur video that has led to sometimes violent protests throughout the Islamic world.

Dutch Euro-parliamentarian Hans van Baalen is unimpressed: “Schulz should be standing up for the freedom of expression”, the centre-right MEP told a Dutch radio station.
“This denunciation puts him on the wrong side of the argument. He’d have been better off saying that while he personally might find it a bad film, it must be possible to make and distribute it”.

According to van Baalen, someone who is on the right side is the Moroccan-Dutch Mayor of Rotterdam, Ahmed Abu Taleb. “He spoke out for freedom of expression and advised Muslims to ignore the film”. Van Baalen emphasised that Abu Taleb is himself a Muslim.
Dutch anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders was also quick to condemn Schulz’s statement. Via Twitter, Wilders called him a ‘coward’ who had ‘sentenced freedom of speech to death’.

According to this article on PI (itself a translation from a Dutch newspaper), the PVV has introduced steps to have Schulz removed from his office. Of course, I don't suppose the effort will succeed, but it's always useful to send a signal to these people that they're not completely immune from public opinion.

Greece's political barometer for September has revealed that 54 percent of Greeks do not trust any political party. The measure of the popularity of political parties has shown a dramatic swing in the favor of Golden Dawn (Chrysi Avgi).

Whilst politicians are held in low regard and more than half of Greek citizens are so disillusioned with the political process that 54 percent no longer trust any political party, there are a few notable changes in the political landscape.

A report in Skai.gr shows that the popularity of the the ultra-nationalist Golden Dawn has risen 10 points since May, winning the party a popularity score of 22 percent. Moreover, their share of the vote as evidenced in polls for September, now stands at 13 percent.

According to Ekathimerini the popularity of Golden Dawn's leader Nikos Mihalolioakos has risen eight points since May to 22 percent.

Golden Dawn attribute their rise in popularity to their words and their actions that speak to Greeks: their opposition to the rising tide of illegal immigration: and disillusionment with the main political parties that lied to win votes.

As Golden Dawn become a more visible presence in Greece, politicians from other political parties are considering measures to reign in the authoritarian actions of its members. Athen News reported Interior Minister Nikos Dendias reiterated in parliament that "We will not have stormtroopers in this country." This was in response to supporters of Golden Dawn forming battalions across the country.

The immunity from prosecution of Golden Dawn MPs is also under consideration at the moment with the aim of waiving their immunity.

I find it interesting that British journalists are willing to talk about Yousaf's tangential connection to a European nationalist terrorist but are completely unwilling to talk about his much more substantial connection to a jihadist Hamas terrorist, which I have documented here.

SCOTLAND'S new 'Foreign Affairs' minister is under pressure after he spoke alongside a controversial Corsican politician linked to a violent separatist terrorist movement.

Humza Yousaf, the rising star of the SNP who was recently appointed External Affairs and International Relations, attended the 1st International Conference of Stateless Nations in Sardinia last month.

He addressed an audience of European separatists, including Catalans, Basques, Irish, Sardinians, Flemish and Venetians, on the SNP's independence campaign.

The Glasgow MSP was followed on stage by Jean Guy Talamoni, the leader of Corsica Libera, a radical party that refuses to renounce a campaign of terror waged against the French state.

He would be better advised to spend his time providing honest answers to questions about Scotland's place in Europe, rather than consorting with colleagues who share his break-up ambitions

Yesterday, Scottish Conservative constitution spokesman David McLetchie questioned Mr Yousaf's judgement in appearing alongside Mr Talamoni just days before he was appointed to his ministerial role.

He said: "Now that he is in the government, I trust Humza Yousaf will take more care in the company he keeps.

"He would be better advised to spend his time providing honest answers to questions about Scotland's place in Europe, rather than consorting with colleagues who share his break-up ambitions."

Corsica has been gripped by strife since the 1970s when the National Liberation Front of Corsica (FLNC) was founded to win independence from Paris through armed struggle.

Over the years, it has carried out dozens of murders, bombings and bank robberies, in both Corsica and mainland France.

It now operates as a kind of Mafia, extorting money from businesses in the form of "revolutionary taxes" and threatening French citizens and other "foreigners" who buy property on the island.

One in five people living in Germany now comes from an immigrant background, according to figures released on Thursday. They show that the minority community grew by more than 1.3% last year at a time when the overall population is falling.

Figures from the German Federal Statistical Office show that the number of people with immigrant backgrounds living in Germany increased by 216,000 from 2010 to 2011. Multiculturalism has been a fiercely controversial topic in Germany in recent years, engendering vigorous debate over the integration of immigrants, many of whom moved to the country in the 1960s as guest workers from Turkey. There are now 16 million people with an immigrant background living in Germany – 19.5% of the country's population.

Younger people are starting to make an effort to reach out to the Turkish communities to integrate themselves with their neighbours. Marlene Schliepach, 26, is studying to become a kindergarten teacher and started learning Turkish two years ago in an effort to be able to talk to the children she will be caring for.

"I'm learning Turkish because I want to convey to my Turkish students that I, as their teacher, and as a German, value their language," she said. "Lots of teachers want to make them focus on only learning German. But integration has to go both ways."

Some, such as Tim Panhorst, 27, are learning Turkish because of family connections to the culture, but think it is important for Germans to attempt to reach out. "I wasn't really learning it from school, but from friends and relatives because my brother is married to a Turkish girl," he said.

"But when I meet Turkish people and speak to them in the language, my experience is that they are always glad someone German can. It's always a way of connecting, and in a positive way."